The Bellwether
Or the little sheep who shouldn’t
I love weird words. Like, “bellwether”. Or “mangelwurzel”. Where do they come from?
“Bellwether” has nothing to do with the weather. It’s a lead indicator of direction. Like social media influencers, setting the trends of the crowd. But this word was coined for sheep.
Shepherds wanted to figure out where their herds were going, without having to track every individual sheep. The lead animal that all the other sheep followed was usually a castrated ram. (“Wether” was Middle English for a castrated ram.) By hanging a bell around the ram’s neck, the shepherds would know where the herd was going.
More importantly, if the ringing bell approached someplace the sheep shouldn’t go, such as a riverbank, a shepherd could intervene before the sheep got into trouble.
I doubt social media influencers want to be considered castrated rams.
